From One to Another: A Letter to Evangelicals

by asocialspirituality

Dear Friends: fellow evangelicals of all shades and colors; of diverse beliefs, practices, and political positions.  From mind, from heart, from keys to screen: I enter this virtual space today to ask a question of us.  In one way, the question is simple: what kind of church—and, indeed, what kind of God–do we want to give to those outside of our church?  In another way, the question is complex: are we, today–in this maddening sea of conflicting beliefs, practices, and political positions that beat against our traveling ship like strong waves in a dark storm, threatening to sink it–fulfilling what Jesus said is the Greatest Commandment and embodying what St. Paul argued is the fundamental mark of the Christian, the way that we will be known?  Perhaps, perhaps: this is the most important question we can, and need to, constantly, ask ourselves.

 

Is our church, if I can put this question another way, giving those outside our walls (and really, we know there shouldn’t be any walls) a gift of love?  Are we doing what we, above all else, have been called to do: to be gifts of love to one another?  In what follows, may deep speak to–sing and dance with–deep.  May divine rain pour on our parched land, our thirsty hearts, and our divisive discourses–so that love can grow and bloom like a wild flower in the desert in order to help others see how beautiful–how loving, how sweet, how precious, and yes, how just and righteous–the God we say we love is.

Today, I have no answers, really.  Just a few questions.

Earlier this week, in an interview with Christianity Today, World Vision’s president Richard Stearns announced that his organization would allow Christians in legal, “same-sex marriages” to be employed at World Vision.  Stearns explained that the controversial decision was about creating “Christian unity” rather than doctrinal compromise.    Just two days later, however, World Vision, a 1 billion dollar development organization that seeks to transform communities through child-sponsorships, reversed its decision.  It was a “bad decision,” Stearns told Religious News Service, “with the right motivations.”  The reversal was likely caused by the number of conservative evangelicals who stopped supporting World Vision when they got wind of the decision.  Stearns reported that, as a result of the decision and the conservative backlash against it, some 5,000 sponsorships were lost, amounting to 2.1 million dollars annually.

There are a lot of reasons why some of us oppose gay marriage.  For some of us, for instance, gay marriage is bad because the Bible tells us so: we think the Bible is against homosexuality, and that we need to be against it too.  Some of us oppose gay marriage because we think that God will reek havoc on the world if gay marriage is permitted in a country we believe to be “a city upon a hill,” existent by divine providence for divine glory.  America, some of us think, is a candle in a dark world slipping into eternal decay and that we need to do everything we can to keep that candle aflame.   For these reasons, some of us believe that political opposition to gay marriage is tantamount to fighting the good fight; to fighting God’s fight. Opposing gay marriage, that is, is standing up for God; for the Gospel that many of us have chosen to give our lives for, come what may.

When the people outside of our church lambast us for our opposition to homosexuality, many of us feel justified: we take the conflict to be a sign that we are doing God’s work in the world.  Jesus came not to bring peace but a sword, some of us will say.

What, though, is God’s work?  In Galatians 5, a chapter that many of us learned as children, we are told that the fruits of God’s work are love, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control.  Micah 6:8 tells us what the Lord requires of us: to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.  True fasting, according to Isaiah 58, is to loose the bounds of injustice, to undo thongs of the yoke, to share our bread with the hungry, to shelter the homeless, and to cloth the naked.  Jesus was clear about our Greatest Commandment: to love God with all that we have, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  St. Paul was also clear about what the fundamental mark of the Christian should be; that we will be recognized in the world by our love for one another.

When we oppose gay marriage, we need to ask ourselves: are we cultivating the fruits of the Spirit?  Are we doing what the Lord requires of us by acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God?  Are we fulfilling the Great Commandment and embodying our divinely-inspired identity?  In a word, are we loving?  Are we creating a gift of love for those outside of our church?

Increasingly, those outside of ours walls (and, again, there really shouldn’t be any walls), do not, as a result of our opposition to gay marriage, think so.  Increasingly, we are seen not as gifts of love but as propagators of hate and oppression.  And it’s not just that we are being perceived as propagators of hate and oppression; it is also that God, by virtue of our actions in the world, is being seen like that too.

Is it time, perhaps, to examine our stance against homosexuality in light of love?  To put down the few passages of the Bible that we think speak against homosexuality and, instead, pick up the whole thing which impels us to, more than anything, be gifts of love to one another?  Is our opposition to homosexuality actually a toxic form of self-love, disconnected from the good of others?  Perhaps, perhaps: nothing less than the very relevance of our message is at stake here.

We have a lot to talk about, to be sure.  The reasons some of us oppose homosexuality, as I mentioned, are not simple; they are also, to many of us, sacred.  But asking this question of love–if what we are doing with our politics and our opposition to homosexuality is loving–is where we need to begin again.

What kind of church, friends–and indeed, what kind of God–do we want to be for the world?  A church of love or a church of hate?  Do we want to speak, with our politics, of a God of freedom or of a God of oppression?

It seems to me that it is especially dark when the moon is mistaken for the sun, and that it is especially cold when fire is mistaken for ice.  Indeed, there is no greater danger than dressing hate with love.

in love, and with the hope that we may be more loving

paul houston blankenship